Sunday, September 11, 2016

A Curryious Discovery

Some facts to know before reading further:
  1. I have only had Indian food twice before.  The first time I tried it was at a fundraiser for my high school band.  It was hosted by our drummer’s parents who I believe were from India in the high school cafeteria.  I remember thinking the rice was very yellow for rice, but enjoyed the different flavor from the Rice a Roni that my family usually ate.   The second time I tried it was at a dinner for a foreign exchange student from India who was staying with my supervisor over the summer.  We went to a restaurant that he chose and I can’t remember what I ordered.  I do remember that it was in a cream sauce that I couldn’t eat because I was allergic to milk.
  2. I’m from New Mexico and “spicy” does not mean the same thing to me as it does to people not from New Mexico.
  3. That being said, I think Curry is a county and not anything having to do with food

Now that you know the facts about my experience with Indian food and my experience with spicy food, maybe you will understand why I didn’t think twice about dumping all of the curry spice from our latest Blue Apron recipe into the skillet.  I did ask the husband what he thought and he looked at me like I was crazy for asking, so I shrugged and dumped the spice packet in.   Oops.


The husband and I sat down to eat and admired our work and even managed to take a picture before diving in.  I took one little taste of the rice and sauce and knew that we were in trouble.  The husband started mixing the sauce and vegetables into the rice in his bowl and I tried not to shout “Noooooooo!!!!” Instead, I managed to suggest that he taste it before mixing it up.  I was hoping that the rice could balance the spice if not mixed together.  But I think I was too late in offering the suggestion and the damage had been done.

Thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary, I now know that curry is “a preparation of meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat, etc.) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry-powder).”  I actually already knew about the turmeric, what I didn’t know was that “bruised spices” could also include “fresh or dried hot chillies.” This information comes from Wikipedia and as you can see “chillies” is not spelled correctly (at least it isn’t spelled correctly in New Mexico,) so keep that in mind when judging the accuracy of the statement.
The first use of the word curry or carriil was in 1598 by W. Phillip J.H. Linshoten in Disc. Voy, E. & W. Indies, Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sowre..but it tasteth well, and is called Carriil.” This implies that the dish was sour and not spicy.  Was chile added to cover up the sour taste? 

Lizzie Collingham states in her book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors that spices were not added to dishes to hide the rancid (what I was calling sour) flavor of meat, but rather to enhance the flavor of the dish.  Before 1500 India relied on pepper to spice their food.  In the later 1400’s, the price of pepper went up and in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue not to discover a new land, but to find an inexpensive route around China to India to purchase spices for Spain. As we all know, he did not reach India, but instead reached the Bahamas, Cuba, and later South America.  He also found the Native American’s “aji” or chile which he mistook for India’s pepper.  He took this pepper plant back to Spain and it somehow came into the hands of the Portuguese who eventually did sail to India and sold the spice to the people of India.   Contrary to popular belief this chili pepper is not native to India; however, it quickly became a staple in Indian cooking.

The chile that came from the Aztecs in Mexico that made its way into New Mexican cuisine is the same chili pepper that made its way into Indian cuisine.  While the green chile and the red chile are staples in New Mexico and are roasted and made into sauces for dishes like enchiladas, the chili peppers are dried and crushed into a powder and added to curry dishes.  New Mexico has a slogan of “Red or green?” to question a person’s chile preference.  Is there such a thing in India to refer to how one prefers curry? Wet or dry?  In a sauce or more like a rub?

The Blue Apron curry powder that we tried must have had dried red chile in it because  it
was deep rich color and it was so spicy that it tasted bitter and even burned my throat as it made its way to my stomach.  It was so spicy that I spent the meal picking out the eggplant and leeks from the sauce and uselessly blowing on them as if that would somehow balance out the spiciness.  Unfortunately, blowing on food only helps lower the temperature not the spiciness.  Neither the husband nor I could finish our curry dish.  Instead, we grabbed some cold pita bread out of the refrigerator and ate it to restore our taste buds back to normal.  The pita bread was our saving grace.  I hate to throw away food, but this dish could not be saved any further.

And the moral of the story is…..?  Sometimes facts aren’t really facts at all; they are opinions or maybe experiences that have developed our opinions that we take as facts.  They cloud our judgement so that we can’t see what is in front of us – like the directions on a recipe card that explicitly say to add as much spice as you like – a clear warning that this could be spicy. 

Some new facts to know:
  1. Food cannot be judged by only two mere experiences
  2.  “Spicy” just might mean the same thing to me as a New Mexican as it does to people not from New Mexico
  3. Curry is still a county in New Mexico, but it is also an intricate, complex sauce that originated in India that became spicier with other influences.

I would like to test curry again in a controlled environment where I only add a little bit of curry powder to the sauce and where I have ready access to a glass of milk and lots and lots of pita bread.

References

Collingham, Lizzie (2006). Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

"curry, n.2." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2016. Web. 11 September 2016.

Wikipedia contributors. "Curry." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Sep. 2016. Web. 11 Sep. 2016.

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